Author(s)

A Saimoto & H Nisitani

Abstract

A simple and intuitive technique to predict the direction of further crack propa- gation was proposed and some basic problems of crack propagation induced by biaxial compression were analyzed. In a simulation of crack propagation under compression, a precise evaluation of contact stress becomes important since the stress at the contact region is related to the principal crack extension force. Under this situation, the proper treatment of partial contact problem as well as ordinary analyses relating to fracture mechanics are both necessary in order to conduct a crack propagation simulation precisely. The crack trajectories obtained by the numerical simulation were compared with those observed in experiments using mortar samples with artificial crack and the excellent agreement of both trajectories was recognized. 1 Introduction A computational simulation of crack propagation is useful in understanding the failure behavior of materials and has become a powerful tool for predicting the prospective damage in structural components. A number of studies discussing the numerical methods for the simulation of crack propagation have been carried out and documented in the literatures [1-41. In a typical simulation, the boundary condition applied for cracks is free of traction since most studies deal with the crack propagation under tensile stresses. On the other hand, a crack can propagate even under compression. However, not so many attentions have been paid to this kind

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